Director: mohammad saffar
Cast: Saeed Rad, Fakhri Khorvash, Mohammadali Keshavarz, Mastaneh Jazayeri, Kazem Roshanzamir
Khorshid Dar Mordab (Sun in the Swamp) is a 1974 Iranian drama film directed by Mohammad Saffar, running 88 minutes. Set against the brooding backdrop of a dense forest, it follows a fugitive man whose guilt and desperation collide with the quiet lives of strangers sheltering him.
What is Khorshid Dar Mordab about?
After committing a violent act against his own family out of obsessive suspicion, a man named Rad flees on horseback deep into an isolated woodland. He seeks shelter in a remote hut inhabited by a quiet settler and the settler's wife and daughter. The household takes him in, but tensions simmer as the wife quietly alerts villagers to the stranger's presence. What unfolds is a slow-burning reckoning between guilt, complicity, and the fragile loyalties of people living on the margins of society.
Cast & crew
Saeed Rad anchors the film in the lead role, one of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema's most versatile and intense screen presences. Fakhri Khorvash and Mohammad Ali Keshavarz provide the domestic counterweight as the couple at the hut, both accomplished veterans of Iranian stage and film. The supporting cast includes Mastaneh Jazayeri, Kazem Roshanzamir, Hajhir Vafadar, and Lale Sadr.
Context & significance
Made in 1974, just before the Iranian Revolution reshaped the country's film industry, Khorshid Dar Mordab belongs to a generation of Iranian films that explored moral transgression and rural isolation with a restrained, literary sensibility. Films of this era often used natural landscapes — forests, marshlands, remote villages — as mirrors for psychological states. For diaspora viewers, this title offers a window into the pre-revolutionary Persian cinema that shaped storytelling traditions still alive in Iranian culture today. It is a piece of cinematic heritage, rarely seen outside Iran.
Where & how to watch
Khorshid Dar Mordab is available on K-Time in its original Persian audio. Stream it on your browser, TV, or phone with no VPN needed and no geo-blocking. Subscription includes full catalog access — cancel anytime.